


Birds Got To Swim

by Cerusee



Series: Batfam Week 2017 [2]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, I love kipling, Swimming, cuddling for warmth, how is that not a public tag already I ask you, i don't know how to write crime, lots of hot tea, some kipling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 03:23:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11199453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/pseuds/Cerusee
Summary: Jason gets knocked into Gotham Harbor during a fight.He'll be fine, though.  Bruce taught him how to swim.  He just needs to make it to shore.For the Batfam week theme: "Hurt/Comfort".





	Birds Got To Swim

It was a lucky hit on the goon’s part. Jason was just close enough to the edge of the deck for the glancing blow to his chest to throw him off-balance, and cause him to trip backwards over the rail of the yacht, plummeting head-first into the bay below. Jason could hear Batman’s faint shout, “ROBIN!” from the deck, before he plunged into the frigid water.

He righted himself, and swam upwards until his head broke the surface. The lenses of his glue-tight mask kept the water out of his eyes about as well as goggles would have, thankfully. He waved upwards, and he saw that Batman saw him. 

“Swim to shore!” he heard faintly.

“GOT IT!” he hollered back.

It was a long way to shore, twenty minutes of brisk swimming, at least. He stripped off his gloves and boots, and reached back to detach his cape. He debated bundling the gloves and boots in the cape and bringing them along—you don’t just go around dropping parts of your costume in Gotham Bay, right, Bruce?—and decided to let them go. Hopefully, they’d be lost in the water and no one would find them. They were replaceable.

He set off, freestyle stroke, for the shore.

 

It was cold. It was cold, it was cold, it was cold. He hadn’t realized just _how_ cold until he’d been swimming for several minutes, and the chill started to set into his muscles. He tried to swim faster— _c’mon, c’mon, mind over matter_ —to warm himself with exertion. But no matter how hard he tried, how frantically he swam, he felt himself slowing, dulling. 

He was so cold.

His fingers and toes were completely numb, his hands and feet weren’t much better. He was shivering, shuddering, head and chest; his arms and legs felt like they were on the moon. But shore couldn’t be far away. He cast his gaze from right to left. There, he thought. Over there. There was the pier. He swam awkwardly towards it, as best he could, with dead arms and legs that still obeyed commands but felt nothing.

It was an eternity of icy water. Everytime he lifted his head to take a breath, he felt like he was waking up all over again, only everything stayed numb.

Breathe, stroke, breathe, stroke, breathe, stroke…

It couldn’t be far away.

 

It didn’t take Bruce long to finish the fight, even without Robin by his side. These were just low-level goons, penny-ante bodyguards and enforcers for the the mob boss that he and Robin had come to bust this evening. Blackwell himself was already secured, thanks to Robin successfully slipping into his locked cabin through a porthole Bruce himself could never have fit through. This was just the clean up. There was no one else on the boat tonight, which why they'd chosen tonight to make the bust, clean and simple, with no citizens to be put in harm’s way.

Once his opponents were all subdued and restrained, Bruce made his way to the bridge of the yacht and set a course for the docks, radioing ahead to the GCPD to let them know the ship was incoming.

 

He was surprised to not see Robin anywhere on the pier. He should have had plenty of time to make it back by now. True, swimming was a fairly new skill for Jason, but Bruce had refused to let him out as Robin before he’d demonstrated he’d be all right in the water in just such a case as this. Had something happened to him in the water? Had there been an unknown threat waiting for him on shore? The thought made his blood run cold, despite the mild night air. He swept down the pier in search of him.

He found him a quarter mile down the wharf. Jason was curled against a pile, sans cape or gloves or boots, shivering violently.

“Robin!” Bruce swooped in, pulling one of his own gloves off and feeling Jason’s forehead. His skin was clammy and cold. Jason stirred, as if trying to lean into his touch, but not quite managing it.

“Ba’m’n,” he slurred. “C’n find my shoes.”

Bruce cursed himself. He should have remembered how cold the water of the bay would be this time of year; the relative warmth of April had deceived him. Just half an hour in the water could be dangerous to someone Jason’s size.

Jason groaned. “Shoes…” His eyes were half-opened slits, and he groped around, as if he thought they could be found on the planks. “Mus’ve...los’em...have t’...fin’em.”

 _That_ wasn't good. Bruce paused in the middle of stripping off his other glove, having intended to massage Jason’s arms. The disorientation and slurred speech suggested not just a severe chill, but full-blown hypothermia. Bolstering circulation to his limbs at this point might be fatal.

Bruce detached his cape and partially bundled Jason up in it, pressing Jason’s chest against his own. “Shh,” he said. “Come on, kid...” He tucked his chin over Jason’s curls as he jogged back towards where they’d parked the Batmobile.

Jason’s breathing was slow and shallow against him, and Bruce thought he might have passed out. Moderate hypothermia, then, not mild. Not good. But if he kept him close, kept him warm, headed straight back home…he slid behind the wheel of the car. If he put the seat back, there was just enough room for them both, without setting Jason down, and depriving Jason of his body-heat. He put the car into gear and slammed the accelerator.

Jason jolted against him. “I lost my shoes!” he said, with surprising coherence.

“You did? Where did you see them last?” Bruce asked him, hoping to keep Jason alert.

“I took ’em off.”

“Where did you take them off?”

Jason didn’t answer. He felt limp against Bruce’s shoulder. He was still so cold, but breathing; Bruce knew that, at least.

Bruce activated the radio. “Agent A. We’re coming in. Robin is hypothermic; prepare accordingly.”

The radio crackled. “Understood, sir.” There wasn’t a hint of concern or censure in Alfred’s voice. There never was, not in the middle of a crisis. Later, maybe.

 

It felt like hours later when they finally sped into the Cave, although it couldn’t have been more than half of an hour at most. Bruce threw open the car door as the tires smoked, holding Jason against him, still shivering. _Thank god for that_. Shivering meant Jason’s body was trying to preserve itself. Alfred was there instantly, whisking heated blankets around Jason. Together, they carried Jason over to a medical bay and laid him partially upright on a bed. Alfred disappeared for a moment, and returned with a steaming mug in one hand, and an armful of bags—no, hot water bottles—in the other.

“Can you drink this for me, Master Jason?” he asked, holding the mug up to Jason’s chin. Hot tea, Bruce could smell it. Heavily sweetened, no doubt.

Jason’s head lolled back, and he blinked at Bruce in a daze. Alfred looked grimly at Bruce, pressing the mug into his hands, and began placing the hot water bottles against Jason’s chest and groin.

Jason shuddered. _Good_. Bruce held the mug under Jason’s chin again, and this time, Jason let him put it against his mouth. Jason took a small sip, and then another, and slumped his head against Bruce’s arm.

“That’s it, Master Jason,” Alfred coaxed. “Keep on.”

Jason raised his head a fraction. “M’tired.”

“I know, Master Jason. But you must rouse yourself, at least until you’ve finished your drink. I insist.”

Jason struggled to hold his head up. He actually managed to get one hand up around the tea, and tucked the mug under his chin, although Bruce was still mostly supporting its weight. Jason took slow, intermediate sips from the mug, pausing every few minutes to rest. When he finished it, Alfred whisked it away, and replaced it another.

“Nnnno,” Jason said, batting it away.

“Yes,” Bruce said, and pushed the mug against his mouth.

Jason whimpered, but he sipped the tea anyway. His head abruptly jerked up. “My shoes!”

“I’ve got them, Jay-lad,” Bruce told him.

“You do not,” Jason grumbled, sounding so normal Bruce felt a rush of relief. “I lost them in the bay. I couldn’t swim with shoes.”

“Drink your tea,” Bruce told him, violently resisting the urge to bury his face in Jason’s hair.

Jason took the tea in both hands and all but shoved his nose into it, which Bruce thought was a good sign.

 

Hours later, and enough hot, sweet tea and soup that Jason had wriggled out of Bruce’s grasp to go on what he deemed a “solo adventure”—Alfred had discreetly positioned himself outside of the bathroom in case of accident—Jason’s temperature was near normal.

“Off to bed, I should think, Master Jason,” Alfred said, although he was looking Bruce dead in the eye.

Jason was capable of walking on his own at this point, but Bruce carried him upstairs anyway, as much for himself as for Jason, and Jason made no protest. He tucked Jason into bed, but when he turned to go, Jason clutched at Bruce’s shirt. “Stay. Read to me?”

“All right,” Bruce said obligingly. “What should I read?”

“Anything’s fine.”

Bruce inspected Jason’s bookshelves, and pulled off a copy of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s _Farmer Boy_. 

_It was January in Northern New York State, sixty-seven years ago. Snow lay deep everywhere,_ the first paragraph began.

Bruce’s eye twitched. He put the Wilder back, and picked out a Kipling. “How about _Just So Stories_?”

“S’good. Read the one with the whale.”

“You’re sure you want to hear about the ocean right now, champ?”

“I already know what Alfred sounds like when he lists all the fish, I want to hear how you do it,” Jason said, flashing him an impish grin.

Bruce never could say no to that smile. “Fine,” he said. He pulled an armchair up to the bed and settled into it, with the book on his lap. Jason turned over on his side so he could watch Bruce read.

 _“How the Whale Got His Throat,”_ Bruce began. _“In the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel._ ” Bruce wasn’t sure how Alfred read this passage, but he did his best, reciting it in a lilting cadence.

“He sure is hungry,” Jason said.

_“All the fishes he could find in the sea he ate with his mouth--so! Till at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was a small ‘Stute fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale’s right ear, so as to be out of harm’s way. Then the Whale stood up on his tail and said, ‘I’m hungry.’ And the small ‘Stute Fish said in a small ‘stute voice, ‘Noble and generous Cetacean, have you ever tasted Man?’”_

“It’s a good thing there are no whales in Gotham Harbor, or I might have ended up like the shipwrecked Mariner,” Jason said.

“You’re a boy wonder of infinite-resource-and-sagacity,” Bruce told him. “And now you know why we carry shark repellent in our utility belts.”

Jason laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to audrey for cheerleading me through this when I got very stuck. Also, for accidentally inspiring me to write it in the first place, during a conversation that went something like this:
> 
> A: I feel like writing H/C, but I’m not sure what…I want to subvert some tropes  
> C: huh  
> A: ooh, I’ve never seen anyone do heatstroke before  
> C: that’s a great idea  
> C:  
> C: I think I’ll drown Jason in Gotham Bay


End file.
